Dick’s Drive-In starts work on new restaurant

Dick Spady is shown during the groundbreaking for the new Dick’s Drive-in on Thursday, May 19, 2011 on state Route 99 in Edmonds. (Photo by Joshua Trujillo, seattlepi.com)

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Dick Spady, the namesake of Seattle Dick’s Drive-In, was in Edmonds Thursday as the company broke ground for its first new location since 1974.

With him were more than 100 fans of the iconic Seattle restaurant who waited in line for his autograph. Some even shed tears.

Residents selected the new restaurant’s general location in an online poll on the company’s website, casting more than 115,000 votes. The new location is planned for the Top Food complex at 21900 state Route 99, near Edmonds Stadium and Edmonds-Woodway High School.

The area was home to an A&W restaurant from the late 1960s through the early 1990s. Rick Hertzog, who owned the A&W, was one of the people at Thursday’s ceremonial groundbreaking.

Last August, officials announced the company would open a new location in one of three regions: north, south or east. The poll continued through Sept. 19 and the north region — which included Shoreline, Mountlake Terrace, Lynnwood, Edmonds and South Everett — had 46 percent of the vote. South was second with 28 percent.

On Sept. 20, company officials announced plans to add an additional location somewhere within a 20-mile area north of the original Dick’s, at 111 N.E. 45th St. in Wallingford. The new location was announced Oct. 15, 2010, on Spady’s 87th birthday.

The Edmonds location is expected to open in December with architecture like the four other outdoor restaurants.

Those Dick’s locations, designed by architect Raymond H. Peck, have large kitchen windows that allow patrons to see the workers prepare food. The Queen Anne location, the only one with indoor seating, was the last of the restaurants, built in 1974.

Besides Wallingford and Queen Anne, Dick’s Drive-In also has restaurants in Lake City, on Holman Road in North Ballard, and on Broadway on Capitol Hill. Spady, who served in both World War II and the Korean War, opened the first restaurant in 1954 with two business partners.

Dick’s once had a location in Bellevue, but that closed in the 1970s.

Company vice president Jim Spady said last year that if the new Dick’s Drive-In location is a success, the next two restaurants will be built in the South and East regions.